Season of Discovery Survival Hunter Ranged DPS Talents and Runes

These are going to be the optimal talent points to take at level 50 in Season of Discovery, assuming that you are wanting to play Survival. If your goal is to do the most damage possible at level 50, there are simply better Hunter specializations to choose from. Both Beast Mastery and Marksmanship will offer more competitive DPS talents, cooldowns, and group buffs. Therefore, this talent build focuses on the two strengths of Survival: Lightning Reflexes to scale Agility stacking, and the significant buffs to traps. With the Trap Mastery Rune, Hunters can trap in combat at level 50. This may prove to be a significant advantage for Survival as a spec. Finally, with the remaining 11 points after taking Lightning Reflexes, you are going to want to jump into the MM tree and grab Aimed Shot.

• Pants — Flanking Strike
• Gloves — Beast Mastery
• Chest — Aspect of the Lion
• Belt — Expose Weakness
• Boots — Trap Launcher
• Helm — Lock and Load
• Wrists — Focus Fire

For the gloves rune, while Explosive Shot was incredibly strong in the first few days during leveling, it was subsequently reworked and is now very weak for single target damage. It is an AOE spell that is only useful on extremely high target situations, which is not common even in the raid. Chimera Shot is reasonably competitive, but is still outclassed because of how strong pets are in the current meta.

For the gloves rune, while Beast Mastery is the only real choice since it will be the largest buff to your pet. In the current state of Season of Discovery, pets are more powerful than they've ever been in Classic WoW. Making your pet as strong as possible is the best choice, even as Survival. If you melee-weave in your rotation, Flanking Strike is the best option when used optimally. If you do not plan on melee-weaving, then you are free to pick any of the other rune options.

For chest rune, Aspect of the Lion is the strongest option by far now that it is an aura. The additional stats scale the damage of both you and your pet, as well as providing an exceptionally powerful raid buff.

For your belt, Expose Weakness is going to be the obvious choice for the huge passive damage bonus it will provide.

Finally, for boots, you'll either use Trap Launcher for shorter or AoE based encounters where traps are going to have an impact or Invigoration for the Mana sustain that will be invaluable on longer encounters.

At level 50, your two new runes will be Lock and Load and Focus Fire. There are not many options to choose from, and while these aren't particularly stellar, the other options are designed specifically for melee. These will be your go-to runes in all situations, although Rapid Killing could prove to be useful on a fight that is under 3 minutes, allowing a second Rapid Fire. However, even then, it's still rather mediocre when you cannot proc its secondary effect at max level. Rapid Fire will be decent for leveling from 50-60 though or for PvP.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Runes guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Hunter.